Adventures and Thoughts of Team Cross

Box 2 of Harmony Valley Farm contained:

• Spinach
• Salad Mix
• Parsnips
• Sunchokes
• Sorrel
• Nettles
• Rhubarb
• Chives
• Red Radish
• Hon Tsai Tai
• Green Garlic
• Garden Herb Pack

Week 18 of Harmony Valley Farm‘s CSA (blog) contained the following:

• Italian garlic,
• Red & Yellow onions,
• Carrots,
• Cauliflower,
• Tomato variety bag,
• Red Grape or Black or Red Cherry tomato,
• Melon,
• Watermelon,
• Sweet corn,
• Orange Ukraine & Red Pimento Peppers,
• Spigarello,
• Broccoli,
• Salad,
• Red or French breakfast radish,
• Jalapeño Peppers,
• Summer squash,
• Eggplant,
• Cucumber, and
• Edamame

Another great week of veggies.  Delicious!

Technorati Tags: CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, Harmony Valley Farms

Week 17 of Harmony Valley Farm‘s CSA (blog) contained the following:

• Yellow onions,
• Italian garlic,
• Green beans,
• Edamame,
• Sweet corn,
• Tomato variety bag: You’ll have a mix that could include Carolina Gold (yellow), a variety of black tomatoes, Copia (striped heirloom type), Rose (pink heirloom type) and some red slicing tomatoes.
• Grape tomatoes,
• Carrots,
• Squash,
• Cucumbers,
• Watermelon,
• Melon,
• Poblano peppers,
• Jalapeños,
• Bell pepper,
• Amaranth,
• Salad Mix,
• Eggplant, and
• Cauliflower

As the veggies have gotten more familiar, we’ve been able to eat a lot more of them in any given week.  We ate pretty much everything this week.  Last weekend we actually bought a bunch of small cucumbers and pickled them!  Hopefully you’ll be seeing more about this later.

This week we took part in Harmony Valley’s Produce Plus program.  They just started offering it this week, but you are able to purchase quantities of certain vegetables that they have a lot of sitting around the farm.  Most of them are “seconds” which have minor defects that prevent them from being sold on the market.  Instead of letting them go to waste Harmony Valley is allowing their members to purchase them at reasonable rate. We bought 25 pounds of tomatoes for $25. Yikes!   We hope to spend some time this weekend canning them.

Wish us luck!

Technorati Tags: CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, Harmony Valley Farms

Week 15 of Harmony Valley Farm‘s CSA (blog) contained the following:

• Italian garlic,
• Onions,
• Green Top carrots,
• Summer squash,
• Cucumbers,
• Tomatoes,
• Peppers,
• Eggplant,
• Potatoes,
• Green beans,
• Yellow Watermelon, and
• Salad mix

I enjoy reading about how others use their box and have enjoyed Simple, Good, and Tasty’s discussion about local food and their Harmony Valley CSA.  A recent post highlighted a more unique use of a CSA.  CSA Pizza is sold by Galactic Pizza, a local pizza joint.  The pizza aptly uses food from their weekly box, which happens to also come from Harmony Valley.

Technorati Tags: CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, Harmony Valley Farms

Week 11 of Harmony Valley Farm‘s CSA (blog) contained the following:

• Fresh garlic
• White cipollini or sweet Spanish onion
• Green Savoy cabbage
• Green Top Carrots
• Gold beets
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Green beans
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Summer squash
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Chard

This seems like it is our biggest box yet.  Fortunately, it is pretty much standard veggies that we’ve heard of before and pretty much know how to use.  Christy has been soliciting feedback on what to do with so many beets (we still haven’t used them from the last few weeks).  So any creative ideas are welcome!

Below is a stir-fry that was used with pretty much all CSA veggies.

Technorati Tags: CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, Harmony Valley Farms

Week 10 of Harmony Valley Farm‘s CSA (blog) contained the following:

• Fresh garlic
• White cipollini onions
• Red or Chioggia beets
• Fennel
• Carrots
• Thai basil
• Summer squash
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Baby bok choi
• Salad Mix
• Cauliflower

Sadly, we will be missing the barn dance on Saturday. Work gets in the way.

Technorati Tags: CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, Harmony Valley, Vegetables

I was amazed at how difficult it was to find a recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam that used both real strawberries and real rhubarb.  Most just called for adding a strawberry jello packet in with your fresh rhubarb. That is great for an “easy” recipe but I wanted to use our CSA fresh strawberries and rhubarb.

I finally found a recipe that looked like it would work.   It called for a 1/2 bottle of Pectin which seemed like an odd way to measure something.  What if the bottle I bought came in a different size than the one they used? My wonderful wife was already at the store so I called and asked her to get a bottle of pectin. After much searching she finally found a box that had 2 liquid pectin packets in it.  And she purchased some jars.

I ultimately used the directions that came with the box (found online here).  It turned out quite well, even though I had to fudge along as we don’t own a true canner and it said to use one and talked about processing jam, etc.

I used:

• 4 cups prepared fruit (buy about 1 qt. fully ripe strawberries and 1 lb. fully ripe rhubarb)
• 1/2 cup water
• 6-1/2 cups sugar, measured into separate bowl
• 1 pouch CERTO Fruit Pectin

I think it took longer than the 45 minutes that it suggested not including the 24 hour waiting period. Part of that was obviously because it was my first time making jam and also because I did it the hard way! It is quite delicious and we’ve almost eaten our first jar already!!

For those who might be interested:
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories 40
Total fat 0g
Saturated fat 0g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 0mg
Carbohydrate 11g
Dietary fiber 0g
Sugars 10g
Protein 0g
Vitamin A 0%DV
Vitamin C 2%DV
Calcium 0%DV
Iron 0%DV